White nationalist to National Security Council

President Trump on Jan. 29 reorganized the National Security Council, elevating his chief strategist Steve Bannon and demoting the Director of National Intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Alt-right" mouthpiece Bannon will join the NSC's inner-core "principals committee." Access to the NSC for a White House strategist is unprecedented. Bannon will serve under National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, a recently retired general who is the Trump administration's most extreme Islamophobe. (NYT, NPR, BBC News)

"Let the grassroots turn on the hate because that's the ONLY thing that will make them do their duty." — New York Times, Nov. 15, 2016, citing a 2014 e-mail first reported by Daily Beast

The Rachel Maddow Show noted when Bannon joined the Trump team in November that his Breitbart News was the originator of the popular "alt-right" hashtag #DeportAllMuslims.

And now they are beginning to put this agenda in place. CNN reports that Bannon is one of two White House figures responsible for the hardline interpretation being used of Trump's executive order barring nationals of designated Middle East countries from entering the United State—for instance, having it apply to green-card holders. The two figures are named as Bannon and Stephen Miller, a former Jeff Sessions aide who now serves as the top policy aide in Trump's White House. The "two Steves" apparently overruled the Homeland Security Department, which held that green-card holders were outside the scope of the order.

If the Trump White House is intentionally forcing a constitutional crisis over the immigrant exclusion orders, so as to claim sweeping powers in the name of "national security," the administration's exponent of the white-nationalist right will be at the very center of power.

Morning Joe presents a montage of video clips from the top policy aide in which he glorifies absolute executive power in terms that would be utterly terrifying—except that Joe Scarborough is openly excoriating him, indicating that these sinister clowns have still got a long way to go before they consolidate the dictatorship they are obviously salivating for.